a multiplayer game of parenting and civilization building
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This is an attempt to categorize and analyze the existing types of work in OHOL and its properties.
I will be slightly more verbose than necessary because I'd like to draw clear boundaries between these types.
Searching
Hauling
Crafting
Sometimes you need item X and you assume that it's somewhere in location L, but you don't know where exactly.
So you wander around L looking for X until you either find it or give up. This is searching.
Examples:
Searching for wild milkweed in the wilderness
Searching for an iron vein in the stone biome
Searching for an axe around the village
Searching for a jungle family to the west
The player needs to know the item and the location.
Searching can be done faster by narrowing down the location or moving faster.
Sometimes you have one or several items X at location L1, and you want them at location L2.
So you move them physically from L1 to L2. This is hauling.
Examples:
Hauling dead rabbits from the rabbit holes to the butchery.
Hauling firewood from the clearing to the fire.
Hauling a stack of plates from around the village to the kitchen.
Hauling bones from the middle of the village to the edge.
Hauling flat stones from the stone biome to the road building site.
Hauling iron closer to the forge
The player needs to know the item, the first location, and the second location.
Hauling can be done faster by moving faster or using an appropriate container.
Sometimes you have materials X, you want items Y, and you know the transitions T necessary for turning X into Y.
So you apply the transitions T to X to get Y. This is crafting.
Examples:
Cutting a wild carrot with a sharp stone.
Trapping a rabbit with a flat stone, a burdock root and a snare.
Cooking pies using a hot oven, flour, rabbit meat, water, bowls and plates.
Making a handcart using logs, a straight shaft, and other tools.
Smithing.
as you can tell, I haven't memorized every recipe and every item name yet
The player needs the materials. The player also needs to know the transitions.
Crafting can be done faster by laying out the items in advance and minimizing walking.
There are other types of work that are harder to categorize. Planning and communicating are the main two. Planning is about figuring out which tasks need to be done first, and communicating is about aligning your plans with other people's plans.
Hauling and searching can be easily done by new players, even though an experienced player will be somewhat more efficient. In Eve camps hauling and searching are often done together, so I'll call this gathering.
In contrast, crafting can only be done efficiently by an experienced player. Crafting also takes virtually no time in comparison, assuming all the materials are ready.
This suggests a natural division of labor: new player collect natural resources and move materials around the village, while experienced players turn materials into more valuable items.
Ungriefing should be easyer than griefing
Anything can be used for griefing, so it can't be easier, only exactly as easy.
Saolin, I'm not sure what exactly you're disagreeing with.
I'm saying that:
1. Highly visible items should be split into tech levels
2. They should also be rebalanced so that it always makes sense to use the last tech level over any of the previous ones
This is kind of a lot of work, yes.
What would this tiered tech add to the game? Honestly town stages are super easy to see. Is there a deep well, newcommen well, or diesel well?
Again, these questions are something only an experienced player can ask.
Uh... 3 or 1 per 10 minutes?
How many tool slots do you need to make fire and run a forge again?
Axe or stone hatchet, Fire bow drill, adobe over the kiln, wooden tongs, and hammer, right? Maybe there exist more, I don't remember as I don't play with tool slots since the bug got fixed. But, I'm confident that 3 isn't enough to blacksmith.
The very next line suggests other ways of learning tools.
You automatically learn everything you made. As an Eve, you need zero tool slots.
I guess they should be renamed into learning points.
I suspect the only people who are limited by tool slots are the ones who know how to earn enough of them.
Maybe the tool slot limit should be like 3, or 1 per 10 minutes.
Instead you'd learn tools either by making them, or by being taught by someone who already learned the tool.
Spamming is not a problem because you can unfollow.
You should see your own orders though
Well if we're trying to make it realistic, not to say it needs to be, then i think language would diverge a lot slower than it would converge because there's no incentive to start changing the language when you're away aside from natural entropy but when you're with another family then you're constantly hearing the other language and getting influenced.
I guess if a branch of the family moved in with foreigners rather than just moved away then it would be different, but again I'm not sure how often this would really come into play... Seems small potatoes compared to fixing property, adding content, improved transport options, and further addressing griefing
There are other reasons. Language constantly adapts to the distribution of messages that need to be communicated. In isolation languages will diverge unless the whole societies stay symmetrical.
I mean yeah, I was the only brown lineage on the server. In what world would I not walk to the main city on the server?
It makes absolutely no sense for Eves to start towns if the server isn't fresh especially if they're one of the required races for climbing tech. Eves shouldn't be out there making Eve camps because you're required to meet up with other families to succeed so as soon as you spawn the "correct" play is to just walk east until you find people or a city. Having race specialization basically makes making new towns silly unless the old towns are incredibly crappy.
Oh, right: you're always better off moving to a large town. IRL we can't do that because living in a large town costs more and because we have important non-movable property.
Problem: progress is hard to see.
An experienced player could look for specific high-tech items. The well is the best sign in the current meta. But for a new player a chaotic bell town and a pine village look the same. It's not obvious that progress is actually possible.
Solution: tiered tech.
Each type of object that is easy to notice should have a different look for each tier.
Upgrading should always be a good idea economically. So that it doesn't make sense to keep a mud hut when concrete is available.
The most noticeable objects are common objects and big and stationary objects.
1. Walls and floors
2. Clothes
3. Containers
4. Food
5. Wells, forges and other stationary tools
A problem with food is that the current yum rules encourage the village to have all of the possible food types, so getting rid of low-tech food won't make much sense.
/die is not an issue because you can always find a way to kill yourself. If it's necessary to increase the timeout between respawns, something else should be done. Observing the mother for a minute before being born, for example.
Instead of races we could have randomly assigned personality traits that are necessary for some high-tech jobs.
Spoonwood, everyone assumes that the thread is recent. Even if we could continue the discussion, it's much better to start a new thread and quote and/or link the important parts. Otherwise people will be constantly confused by old comments that were made in a totally different context.
One idea we've already had: make the relations two-way.
Being accepted as a follower would give you credibility.
The bigger the hierarchy, the better it is to be a part of it, even as a lowest level follower.
There are three ways to measure someone's importance:
1. The size of the hierarchy they're part of
2. The number of followers they have
3. The distance to the king
Being a direct follower of the king is way rarer if the king has to approve each of his followers.
But in this case each leader should always know the whole list of her followers. Because she's responsible for them.
More generally, two-way links would give the system more inertia. Good for making it important, bad for making it easy to use.
Maybe the system should be even more abstract, farther from anything even remotely roleplay-like. It shouldn't attract attention, it should just be the way things are.
Decay might be implemented as transitions with timer. So you'd just remove transitions with timer that result in nothing.
For example, the second transition for broken skewers: https://onetech.info/847-Broken-Skewer
Surely the situation would be the same even if the group of vegans was not a family?
Could you provide an example of a situation where a single family would need to migrate?
I'd be very surprised if someone who want to be a griefer doesn't say "I FOLLOW MYSELF" asap. Staying in a hierarchy that can mark you for misdeeds strikes me as particularly unsafe for anyone acting in an anti-social fashion.
You will still be marked as an exile for everyone who is in the hierarchy.
Basically as long as some population cannot possibly participate in the system, the society cannot develop an expectation that almost everyone is participating in the system.
The main limitation right now is that you can't change your leader for the first ~15 years.
So the default is actually important.
Following the mother's leader or no one at all doesn't work well because it usually means you'll have no leader for 20% of your life. It's very hard to bootstrap a norm where everyone must be in the same hierarchy when 20% players are incapable of joining the hierarchy.
Following the mother works a little bit better. (Well, following anyone at all is better.) But you still can't choose, so it breaks when the mother doesn't care.
I suggest we make each baby follow the person that named them. At least naming takes a tiny bit of effort and attention.
Yeah, orders shouldn't be passed down to an exiled subtree.
Alice, a leader, could fake-follow Bob, another leader, to give her followers access to Bob's orders.
Bob would then have to exile each of her followers individually. Tracking them all down would be pretty much impossible.
Funny enough, the best he could do is to follow and then unfollow Alice. This will break Alice's follow.
It doesn't make sense for babies to damage fitness score :(
So a few problems with the current system:
1. Passing the crown changes the color of the badge
2. It also changes the super-leader's title
3. The title mostly reflects the structure of the tree and not actual power. A countess can be just a granny, regardless of the current inheritance rules, and a lord can rule the whole server
Maggie, can you use the exile mechanic to mark the griefer?
In order to teach players, players have to be willing to listen. That's the real challenge.
I'm explicitly assuming that the hierarchy system works. In that case your followers will listen, by definition :)